h 



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JOHN BROWN FIFTY YEARS AFTER 



BY 



JOHN T. MORSE, JR. 



[Reprinted from The Atlantic Monthly for November, 1910] 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMrANY 



4 Park Street, Boston 



JOHN BROWN FIFTY YEARS AFTER 



BY JOHN T. MORSE, JR. 



John Brown's singular life has been 
followed by a remarkable immorlalit y. 
Two mad da\s at Harper's Ferry, then 
the impressive spectacle of the execu- 
tion; some strikin<^ things written and 
said during his short imprisonment: — 
thus much has impelled Americans to 
an eager study of his life and character. 
Evidently it is his personality that en- 
thralls, not his historic importance, 
which was trifling; for his ^'irginia raid 
startled and passed like a flash of light- 
ningwhich enters the earth without vis- 
ible eff'ect. Mr. Villard truly says that 
psychologists find in him 'a field for in- 
quiry and speculation without end '; the 
historian, however, dismisses him with 

1 a few pages. Yet not half a dozen of 
all our statesmen, warriors, and writers 
who played efl^ective parts l)etween 1850 
and 1865 have found so many bio- 
graphers as have tried to tell Brown's 
slory, no one of whom, to speak truth 
w ithout courtesy, prior to Mr. \'illard, 
has done really good work. 

Dr. Rhodes, discouraged probably 
by conlemplaling ihe shelf which held 

-^hc John Hrown liloralurc, wrote that 
'a century may perchance pass before 
an historical estimate acceptable to all 
lovers of liberty and justice can be 
made of John Brown.' The dispassion- 
ate pages in which these very words oc- 
curred came near to disproving them; 
and now Mr. Villard, 'fifty years after' 
Brown's death, and very few years 

' John Brmrn : n Binrjrnphi/ Fifty Ycarx Aflrr. 
Hy Oswald ('■ vwhisos Villard. 7.'?8 pp.. with 
ciimplctc hihliofjraphv ami notes. Boston: 
HouRhton Mifflin Co. 1910. , : 

662 * ..." 



after Dr. Rhodes's remark, has com- 
pleted the disproof. Not that Mr. Vil- 
lard has spoken the last word; for 
Brown's career, affecting differently 
the different temperaments of writers, 
will forever remain a subject of discus- 
sion ; but he probably has made a final 
presentment of the case. No narrative 
can ever be more full and accurate; no 
exposition of arguments and points of 
view more fair and even-minded. 

The chief contribution making by 
modern writers to the advancement of 
historical work, exceeding even the 
fruits brought by the delving special- 
ist, is the temperate, conscientious, hon- 
orable purpose to tell exact truth and 
suggest unbiased conclusions. Even the 
historical biographer, generally led to 
his subject by admiration, appreci- 
ates how often extravagant laudation 
has insidiously betrayed [the good 
name of many a worthy man, who might 
ha\e l)ecn well esteemed had not the 
praise-mongers vexed readers into con- 
tradictory temper. Mr. Villard, shrewd 
and honest, neither idolater nor show- 
mnn, gives John Brown just as John 
Brown was, in the flesh and in the spirit, 
and then kindly leaves us to give praise 
or blame as we will. 

Brown himself praised no one; he 
did not indeed often or greatly praise 
even the God of whom he spoke in 
nearly every hour of every da>"; for his 
conception of God was of a Being too 
fully occupied in imposing duties and 
exacting performance, to endure that 
time should be wasted in praise-l)ear- 
ing. He himself, fully sympathizing 



JOHN BROWN FIFTY YEARS AFTER 



1 

663 



with this habit of a God whom he had 
made quite after his own image, prac- 
tical, energetic, stern, and inflexible, 
may to-day be interested in the judg- 
ments which are now being pronounced 
upon him among living men; but it 
is not conceivable that he much cares 
whether they are exalting him or not. 

Mr. Villard conducts his narrative 
with much particularity, making the 
reader the constant companion of 
Brown throughout. As a fgfrmer, es- 
pecially as a sheep-raiser and wool- 
seller, he was exceptionally skillful; 
but the many speculations in business 
and in lands into which his ' migratory, 
sanguine,' restless temperament led 
him, resulted generally in loss and liti- 
gation, so that the procession of his 
law-suits is startling. The story shows 
well his incapacity for putting himself 
in the other man's place; his points of 
view were always fixed points, and all 
his opinions were convictions. Thus 
it happened that though, as Mr. Vil- 
lard says, there is 'no allegation of dis- 
honesty,' there was sometimes danger 
that his honesty might be chiefly con- 
spicuous in his intentions. A neighbor 
and creditor described him as ' of ordin- 
ary calibre, with a propensity to busi- 
ness failure.' Dr. Von Hoist, writing 
of him well from the point of view of an 
admirer, attributes to him a 'sober, 
wary judgment'; but Dr. Rhodes finds 
him 'of moderate intellectual capacity' 
and 'narrow-minded.' 

These years when Brown was en- 
gaged in ordinary occupations, and 
when therefore he was to be judged by 
ordinary standards, establish the cor- 
rectness of Dr. Rhodes's estimate. Yet 
Brown's own estimate, in the few but 
very remarkable autobiographic pages 
in which he sketches his earlier years, is 
perhaps the best of all, and indicates 
that he had singular self-knowledge, 
and in fact knew himself better than 
the commentators have known him. 



He wrote that John ' followed up with 
tenacity whatever he set about'; that 
he ' rarely failed in some good degree to 
eff"ect the things he undertook'; that 
therefore he 'habitually expected to 
succeed'; but 'with this feeling should 
be coupled the consciousness that our 
plans are right in themselves,' a con- 
sciousness which never failed Brown so 
long as the breath of life was in him. 
Later he adds that he 'came forward 
to manhood quite full of self-conceit, 
and self-confident,' and 'too much dis- 
posed to speak in an imperious or dic- 
tating way.' 'Conceit' is hardly a 
well-selected word, but faith in his own 
opinions and plans Brown had beyond 
all limit. 

Brown says that at the age of twelve 
he became an abolitionist. Thereafter 
he grew rapidly more and more intense- 
ly devoted to abolition; he made his 
"children vow themselves to it; he was 
active in the business of the 'under- 
ground railroad'; he had schemes for 
educating and colonizing negroes at 
the north, and took up his residence in 
the Adirondacks, where he hoped to 
found a settlement of these people, 
chiefly runaway slaves. \ When, in the 
' dark and bloody ' days in Kansas, four 
of his sons undertook to farm there, 
he promptly followed, not indeed to 
settle in that troubled land, but to take 
a hand in the murderous strife there 
waging, — a hand which soon approved 
itself so strenuous and bloody that no 
other Free-State partisan could vie with 
the reputation of Brown in the terrible 
competition of shooting, burning, and 
plundering. His name became like that 
of the Black Douglas on the Scotch- 
English marches. 

The only virtue then visible in that 
unhappy land was physical courage, 
and even this often paraded in odious 
companionship with shameful acts. 
None the less Brown gave himself to 
the dreadful work of the Lord with 



G64 



JOHN BROWN FIFTY YEARS AFTER 



that unsparing thoroughness so often 
born of religion. From infancy almost 
he had been an untiring student of the 
Bible; his familiarit}^ with the Old Tes- 
tament was wonderful ; quotations from 
both the Old and the New were ever 
on his tongue, and it is characteristic 
that his especial favorite was: 'With- 
out blood there shall be no remission 
of sin.' Unfortunately the Old Testa- 
ment is a dangerous book for a man of 
his temperament; and the merciless 
old Hebrews who wrote it, and whose 
fierce careers furnished so many in- 
cidents for it, were the worst possible 
comrades for Brown with his intense 
nature and literal intellect. In their 
violent fellowship he was sure soon to 
be embroiled in serious mischief. The 
sword of the Lord and of Gideon, 
though doubtless an exceeding good 
weapon in those days of the bad Mid- 
ianites, was an antiquated implement 
in a civilized land nearly nineteen cen- 
turies after the New Testament had 
rendered the armory of the Old Testa- 
ment an anachronism. Brown, how- 
ever, knowing nothing of anachronisms, 
but well assured that he knew all about 
this holy sword, grasped it at once with 
both hands. 

Mr. Villard takes us through the 
Kansas period almost day by day, with 
minute details of Brown's incessant 
comings and goings, his many conceal- 
ments and aliases. Nicolay and Hay 
speak of these doings as theatrical. Il 
may, however, be remembered that Mr. 
Lincoln spoke very coolly of Brown, 
and Lincoln's biographers may have 
taken their tendency from this. Prob- 
aiily the phantasmagoric element was 
due only to the mental excitement 
which drove Brown to eternal move- 
tnenl. Certainly he was hideously gen- 
uine when he organized the massacre 
at Pottawotomie. He, with four of his 
J sons and three other persons, enticed 
at night five unarmed pro-slaver}' men 



from their homes and hacked them to 
death with cutlasses. Brown led the 
band, commanded the killing, but him- 
self probably did none of it. 

Even in the Kansas of 1856, and 
among Free-State men, such a slaugh- 
ter was received with horror; and to- 
day there is no price which would not 
be gladly paid by Brown's admirers if 
thereby the foul deed could be blotted 
forever from the memories of men. It 
has therefore always been matter of 
special interest to know what each suc- 
cessive biographer would say of this: — 
may not some one, some day, arise to 
excuse it? Unfortunately there is more 
in the case than even the brutal kill- 
ing. There is the shock of seeing Brown, 
with that stern paternal authority for 
which he was noted, bid his sons do the 
hideous slashing. Moreover, though 
there was little chivalry mingled with 
Kansas courage, the odium of coward- 
liness clings about the deed. For fur- 
ther humiliation. Brown always al- 
leged that he had not raised his hand 
against any man that night. Reports 
of his phraseology indicate that his 
words were carefully chosen to be true 
in the letter and false in the spirit, and 
certainly they long deceived his Eastern 
friends into a belief that the blood-stain 
was not upon him. It would ha\e been 
better if he had himself struck down his 
victims; better if he had then availed 
himself of the ordinary privilege of a 
criminal to give a simple convx'ntional 
denial, instead of sneaking behind a 
quibbling equivocation. 

All this is a trying test for Mr. Vil- 
lard, who certainly meets it admirably. 
His narrative is precise and full, with 
no color infused into it by the manner 
of telling. Every argument, suggestion, 
and point of view, pro and con, is stated 
with perfect evenness. One seems to 
be present at a great criminal cause, 
w^hen an able and upright judge, in his 
charge, reviews with judicial clearness 



JOHN BROWN FIFTY YEARS AFTER 



665 



all facts and all considerations. There 
is no futile attempt at palliation, where 
the only possible palliation must be 
sought in Brown's mental condition. 
'God is my judge,' Brown said, nor 
ever evinced anxiety as to the judg- 
ment. Later he said, ' I had no choice. 
It has been decreed by Almighty God, 
ordained from eternity, that I should 
make an example of these mfen.' Fur- 
ther than this he did not go in shift- 
ing the responsibility upon God; but 
one of his biographers has been less 
self-restrained, alleging that the great 
Ruler 'makes his will known in ad- 
vance to certain chosen men and women 
who perform it, consciously or uncon- 
sciously.' Of course if Brown was the 
attorney of God, he is justified; but as 
his credentials cannot be brought into 
court, his only defense fails. Mr. Vil- 
lard, in honest man-fashion, says : — 

'For John Brown no plea can be 
made that will enable him to escape 
coming before the bar of historical j udg- 
ment. There his wealth of self-sacri- 
fice and the nobility of his aims do 
not avail to prevent a complete con- 
demnation of his bloody crime at Pot- 
tawotamie, or a just penalty for his 
taking human life without warrant or 
authority. If he deserves to live in his- 
tory, it is not because of his cruel, grue- 
some, reprehensible acts on the Potta- 
wotamie, but despite them.' 

To this period belong also the strange 
proceedings at Chatham, Canada West. 
There in two successive ' Conventions ' 
Brown gathered some four dozen men, 
chiefly negroes, and caused them by 
vote to adopt 'A Provisional Consti- 
tution and Ordinances for the People 
of the United States,' whereby was 
gravely established a skeleton govern- 
ment, with organic laws, a Congress, 
and a Judiciary, and regulations for 
making treaties; with the proviso, how- 
ever, that all this was not to be 'con- 
strued so as in any way to encourage the 



overthrow of any State Government, 
or of the General Government of the 
United States.' Only 'Amendment and 
Repeal ' were sought ; and the flag ' that 
our Fathers fought under in the Revo- 
lution' was to be retained. Brown was 
chosen Commander-in-chief; Secreta- 
ries of State, of War, etc., were selected, 
and many military commissions were 
signed in blank. Mr. Villard says there 
is much to admire in this surprising doc- 
ument; but the presence of high moral- 
ities therein does not prevent him, as 
it had not previously prevented Von 
Hoist, from noting the evidence of a 
mind not entirely sane or normal. This 
habit of documentary formality was 
very persistent with Brown, and seems 
to indicate a longing for orderly lines of 
thought and action in spite of a painful 
incapacity for carrying out the instinct^ 

Only news of an assassination has 
ever so startled our people as did the 
news of the raid upon Harper's Ferry. 
No popular rumor ran before it; only 
a few persons, contributors to what 
would now be called a 'blind pool,' 
were in uneasy expectation of the ex- 
plosion of some mysterious, desperate 
scheme. It was on Sunday, October 
16, 1859, that Brown led out his little 
band of eighteen men from the Kennedy 
farm in Maryland, where they had 
been lurking several weeks. Their sud- 
den attack upon the arsenal, occupied, 
not garrisoned, only by civilian em- 
ployees, was easily successful; but not 
many hours later it became evident-- 
even to Brown that they had only en- 
sconced themselves in a trap which was 
already closed. On Tuesday all was 
over; ten of the raiders were slain or 
mortally wounded, two of these being 
sons of Brown; five, including Brown, 
were prisoners; the others were saving 
themselves by flight. 

So sudden had the mad enterprise 
been, and so promptly was it brought 
to naught, that for the moment bewild- 



666 



JOHN BROWN FIFTY YEARS AFTER 



ermcnt rested upon all, — bewilder- 
ment which changed into astonish- 
ment as knowledge concerning the 
plot was gathered, showing the folly 
of it, the incredible stupidity. Mr. 
Villard's exposition of these conditions, 
especially as showing the state of 
Brown's mind up to the close of the 

/ incident, is most interesting. It was 
three or four years since the plan had 
occurred to him; yet with so much 
t ime for thought, he seems to ha\'e done 
no thinking. So far as concerned pre- 
paring a scheme, all had been blunder- 
ing; as for plans for subsequent action, 
whether in case of failure or success, all 
had been vagueness. He had been 
driven blindly forward by an uncon- 
trollable desire to do an act; but when 
it came to devising an effective act, or 
a feasible manner of doing it, or any 
way of escaping from miscarriage or of 
improving success, his ideas had lapsed 
into chaos, his mind had become piti- 
fully helpless. 

Naturally the cry of ' madman ' arose 
on all sides; and equally of course 
Brown's counsel, in the trial which 
immediately ensued, wished to set up 
insanity, the only possible defense. But 
Brown decisively forbade it, and the 
popular cry quickly ceased. So he was 
tried, convicted, and executed as a 
sane man; and ever since has been writ- 
ten about, praised, blamed, judged as 
a sane man, a fanatic certainly, too ex- 
alted to be altogether of normal mind, 

-"4nit responsibly intelligent, and en- 
titled to credit, or suljject to discredit, 
for ail that he did or said. He is habit- 
ually called a Crusader, a Roundhead, 
a Covenanter, or a Puritan, living out 
of time, but never nowadays a luna- 
tic. None the less the question was 
not settled either by Brown's nega- 
tion or by the sudden silence of the 
people. His opinion was of no account ; 
for if he was insane he certainly did not 
know it. There was reason also why 



the cry of 'madman' should die away 
so soon as there was time for reflection. 
For this theory robbed the slavery men 
of a victim, and the anti-slavery men 
of a martyr. So likew ise in these later 
days, the establishment of Brown's in- 
sanity would deprive the world of a 
hero. In the face of such a possible 
loss it may be well not to treat the point 
as being' in doubt; yet, if to what we 
have seen of Brown's mental workings 
we add the fact that there was much 
insanity among his kindred, it must 
be admitted that a modern criminal 
lawyer, with his cohort of alienist sub- 
sidiaries, would probably be well con- 
tent to take the case for the defense'^ 

Whatever feeling of admiration, con- 
demnation, or repulsion may be enter- 
tained toward Brown prior to his cap- 
ture, only one sentiment can be evoked 
by the closing weeks; Dr. Rhodes's 
' century ' is not needed for that ripen- 
ing. Yet how near it was to being lost ! 
Lieutenant Green, hurrying to the at- 
tack, snatched his dress-sword instead 
of his heavy cavalry sabre. With the 
light weapon he wounded Brown se- 
verely in the head, and bent the blade; 
the sabre would have done more deadly 
work. In the latter case, as Mr. Villard 
truly says. Brown would soon ha\e 
been forgotten; it w^as by what came 
after that skirmish that his apotheosis 
was assured. v 

It has been often said that if Christ's 
life of humane teaching had not been 
closed by a crucifixion, there would \\a.\Q 
been no Christian religion. Brown's 
worshipers are not backward with theiry 
parallel. If Brown's violent career hacf 
not been followed by his execution, 
there would have been no — irhat? 
What, indeed? a question that cannot 
be shirked, if Dr. Rhodes's 'estimate' 
is to be established. What has resulted 
for mankind from his life and his deat h ? 
There are various points of view. There 
is the practical one, of his influence 



JOHN BROWN FIFTY YEARS AFTER 



667^ 



upon (he course of events. As to this 
the fact must be admitted that every- 
thing would have happened just as in 
fact it did happen, if Brown had never 
lived and never been hanged. For the 
historian the Harper's Ferry raid is a 
mere episode, a spectacular incident, 
without consequences. There did, how- 
ever, grow out of it a popular influence 
of much though indefinite value, which 
found expression in that famous war- 
song which perpetuated his name as a 
symbol. 

Brown himself, gathering his wits 
with surprising clearness after the sud- 
den, confounding disappointment of 
his disaster, amid shattered hopes and 
suffering from wounds, knew at once 
his unexpected usefulness. ' I am worth 
inconceivably more to hang than for any 
other purpo^ he said, shrewdly and 
gallantly; and he saw in his personal 
failure and sacrifice of life a link clev- 
erly forged by God in the long chain of 
His purpose. He was content. 

\ Another and important point of view 
relates to what Brown left behind him 
for later generations of mankind. If he 
has given them a grand ideal, a noble 
example of self-devotion in the cause of 
humanity, then his usefulness may be 
even greater than he ever hoped for, 
though in a way quite undreamed of by 
him. The present tendency seems to 
be in the direction of immortalizing 
him as a hero, and heroes are well worth 
having, even if, in order to do so, there 
is need of some forgetting and much 
forgiving. It is unfortunately true that 
for Brown's apotheosis much must be 
forgotten, and even more must be for- 
given. I Upon the platform of the gallows 
he still stood responsible for Pottawoto- 
mie. Up to the time when he was taken 
prisoner, one must have the tempera- 
ment of an enthusiast to admire him; 
thereafter, however, there is a some- 
what different atmosphere. The element 
of tenderness, which had run like a 



fine (alas, too fine!) thread through his 
stern, inexorable nature, now found 
better expression in noble and touch- 
ing letters to his family. There was per- 
ceptible a tendency to persuade him- 
self and others that he had been more 
averse to bloodshed than the story of 
his life would indicate; yet there was 
not the slightest symptom of remorse 
for any of his deeds of violence; indeed, 
there could not properly or logically be 
any remorse when he had been merely 
an instrument to do God's will, and 
his absolute certainty that this was the 
case remained unshaken to his last 
breath. It was characteristic, that even 
now he could not see his lifelong error 
in contemning the abolitionists who 
used only words, though his own acts 
of violence had led only to a ruin which 
was humiliatingly fruitless; to the end 
he could neither learn a lesson nor 
acknowledge a mistake. 

Finally he faced death with perfect 
gallantry; indeed, he could not have 
done otherwise after having so long 
dealt lightly with mere life, whether 
in taking it from his enemies, or in en- 
couraging his sons and followers to 
risk and lose it. Even his Southern 
opponents chivalrously admitted that 
his sincerity and his courage rendered 
his closing days grand and impressive. 

In these ultimate scenes Mr. Villard 
at last finds and takes his opportunity. 
Throughout his book he has borne him- 
self with conscientious self-restraint. 
But with Brown in prison and sure to 
be hanged, he feels no longer the need 
of the judicial poise; at last he is free to 
write as his feelings dictate, and to use 
in his picture the colors which he is sure 
belong there. He has taken us through 
the story of his hero's life, without 
once telling us that it is of a hero 
that we are reading; but now, when it 
seems to him utterly impossible that 
we should not recognize the fact, why 
should he not sympathetically join 



p 

^ VVI 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



with us in generous and frank appreci- 
ation? Now, too, we see how wise he 
has been in the structure of that nar- 
rative which at times we may have 
thought a httle wearisomely minute; 
for b.\- putting us into neighborly, daily 
companionship with Brown, he has 
caused us unconsciously to imbibe that 
personal interest which may beget a 
kindly sentiment even where there is 
not tjuite approval. As the narrative 
then expands in approaching Harper's 
Ferry, we begin to get the sense of an 
impending doom, and soon the final 
events unroll with the awe and pathos 
of impressive fate. The story has the 



011 899 164 3 



movement c 
its simple b 
tion of the 
ness, then its vague foreboding of ter- 
rible disaster, and finally its grand and 
fatal close. Perhaps in thus dramat- 
ically fashioning his volume Mr. Vil- 
lard obeyed an instinct rather than 
acted upon a preconceived plan; that 
is often the case with great work, where 
a writer's feelings are deeply enlisted. 
Be this as it may, the merit and 
charm are none the less; he has seized 
well a splendid opportunity and has 
written one of the great biographies 
of our literature. 



^ 



